heidi ewing

We’re used to our friends’ Kickstarter pleas and occasionally throw cash their way (the average project that meets its funding goals rakes in about $5,000). Recently, however, some big names in indie talent have made headlines thanks to their own campaigns on the crowdfunding platform. In this corner, we’ve got punk cabaret doyenne Amanda Palmer, who raised almost $1.2 million via Kickstarter to fund her new album. And in the blue trunks, we’ve got Oscar-nominated documentarians Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (JESUS CAMP, THE BOYS OF BARAKA), who wowed everyone at Sundance with their latest film DETROPIA, but still failed to find a distribution deal. Instead, they’ve

Indie directors looking to shoot a post-apocalyptic film on the cheap: head to Detroit. The reviews — mostly ecstatic reviews — are pouring in for Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s DETROPIA, and they are awash with heartbreaking descriptions of the once-great city’s crumbling infrastructure. At Film Threat, Don R. Lewis describes Detroit as looking like something “from a parallel universe that was hit by an Armageddon.” Others describe how absurdly cheap real estate has become in the area; you can buy a downtown loft for $25,000 because demand is so incredibly low. A director needs to take advantage of this sort of free production value.